Outdated landline telephone cables owned by AT&T and Verizon are poisoning US soil and water, report claims

A minimum of 2,000 outdated landline telephone cables owned by AT&T, Verizon and different telecom giants are contaminating US soil and water with lead, which may trigger mind injury, infertility and kidney failure.

The degrading cables are coated in lead, first used within the Eighties and phased out within the Nineteen Fifties. 

These poisonous networks of cables sprawl alongside the Mississippi River, the Detroit River, the Willamette River in Oregon, and the Passaic River in New Jersey and cling close to faculties, playgrounds and bus stops.

Lead levels at a New Iberia fishing spot had been 14.5 instances the US Environmental Safety Company (EPA) threshold for areas the place youngsters play, based on a Wall Road Journal evaluation.

It’s believed that AT&T and Verizon know the poisonous lead cables however have but to deal with the problem.

Greater than 1,750 of the lead-sheathed cables had been discovered underwater, and about 250 cling alongside streets and fields, based on WSJ

A Telecommunications Affiliation (USTelecom) instructed DailyMail.com: ‘We’ve been unable to verify the knowledge reported by the Wall Road Journal as a result of we don’t have entry to the entire information or methodology underlying its conclusions. 

‘We’ve not seen, nor have regulators recognized, proof that legacy lead-sheathed telecom cables are a number one reason for lead publicity or the reason for a public well being problem.’

Youngsters uncovered to excessive ranges can injury the mind and nervous system, gradual development and improvement, and trigger studying and conduct issues and listening to and speech issues.

And adults can expertise hypertension and mind, kidney and reproductive well being points.

Greater than 1,750 of the lead-sheathed cables had been discovered underwater, and about 250 cling alongside streets and fields, based on WSJ.

The report additionally found lead-covered aerial cables in a area of central Pennsylvania alongside the Monongahela River that runs by way of a city referred to as Coal Middle.

A mom sought medical assessments for her six-year-old twins, discovering that they had excessive ranges of lead of their blood.

And the assessments had been taken simply days after the youngsters performed in so much close to a drooping cable. 

Testing of soil within the space revealed samples had 7.5 instances the EPA’s advisable threshold for youngsters’s play areas. 

The Journal’s findings ‘counsel there’s a important drawback from these buried lead cables in every single place, and it’ll be in every single place and you are not even going to know the place it’s in a whole lot of locations,’ mentioned Linda Birnbaum, a former EPA official and director of the Nationwide Institute of Environmental Well being Sciences, a federal company. 

In 2021, AT&T settled a lawsuit by agreeing to spend as much as $1.5 million to take away eight miles of poisonous phone cables deserted on Lake Tahoe (pictured) many years in the past

 Telecommunications Affiliation shared this graph on its web site, displaying lead ranges within the blood have dramatically fallen within the US because the late Nineteen Seventies

Through the investigation, WSJ discovered greater than 100 faculties with round 48,000 college students close to hanging cables.

And greater than 1,000 faculties and baby facilities are inside half a mile of an underwater cable.

New Jersey transit information revealed over 350 bus stops are subsequent to or beneath lead-coated cables.

WSJ additionally reported that 80 % of soil samples taken at websites close to underwater cables had excessive lead ranges.

‘As a extremely regulated business, we have carried out and maintained robust security applications and comply with native, state, and federal environmental and public well being and security legal guidelines and rules,’ the USTelecom spokesperson instructed DailyMail.com.

‘Our business additionally has an extended custom of carefully following science and proof because it pertains to public well being, environmental safety, and employee issues of safety. 

‘And secure work practices throughout the telecommunications business have confirmed efficient in decreasing potential lead exposures to staff. 

‘Legacy lead-sheathed telecom cables had been deployed within the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure, and placement of those cables then started to get phased out within the Nineteen Fifties after the event of a brand new sort of sheathing.’

Verizon, for its half, instructed WSJ that it was ‘taking these considerations relating to lead-sheathed cables very significantly,’ including that ‘there are numerous lead-sheathed cables in our community (and elsewhere within the business) which might be nonetheless utilized in offering important voice and information providers, together with entry to 911 and different alarms, to prospects nationwide.’

In 2021, AT&T settled a lawsuit by agreeing to spend as much as $1.5 million to take away eight miles of poisonous phone cables deserted on Lake Tahoe many years in the past. 

AT&T took a extra aggressive method when chatting with the WSJ. 

Day by day Mail contacted AT&T, however USTelecom responded instead.

‘The well being, security and well-being of our folks, our prospects, and our communities are of paramount significance,’ AT&T instructed the WSJ in a press release, including that the report’s findings ‘conflicts not solely with what impartial specialists and longstanding science have said in regards to the security of lead-clad telecom cables but in addition our personal testing.’

Nonetheless, an inside observe from AT&T reviewed by the WSJ paints a special image. 

‘Underground cable presents actual potentialities for overexposure’ for staff eradicating them, AT&T mentioned in a 2010 presentation about worker security, based on the WSJ. 

‘Some older metropolitan areas should have over 50 % lead cable.’

The USTelecom spokesperson instructed DailyMail.com: ‘The US telecommunications business stands prepared to have interaction constructively on this problem.’